“You won’t get away with this,” she answered. “You can’t hide the evidence this time. I’m telling the Chief, the Commander, the entire rock for that matter, as soon as I get out.”
“Who says you’re getting out?” Billy asked as he backed out of the room.
“I disappear and they’ll be all over your case.”
“I don’t think so. It’s going to look just like an accident,” Billy said, slamming the door behind him.
At which point, Katie realized the little room was airtight.
Katie looked around for the escape switch or an emergency alarm. All of these spaces were supposed to have at least one of them. There was a heavy piece of machinery, a three-D metal printer of some sort, in front of of where they should be. She squeezed in beside it and looked in behind. The switches were smashed. “Accidentally” not working, no doubt.
Katie spent a hectic, breathless half hour trying to get at them and activate one anyways. It didn’t work.
They’d seen this coming. They’d planned well.
The room had less than a day’s air, but Katie knew she’d start succumbing to carbon dioxide poisoning from her own breathing well before the lack of air became a problem. Probably best to do as little breathing as possible. On ship they’d have had emergency re-breathers, but there was nothing of that sort here.
Katie was trapped.
She only had a few hours to escape.
* * *
Katie was in shock. Aghast. Was this it then? The end of all her dreams?
Had the bad guys in fact won?
Wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. Guess life wasn’t an uplifting story after all.
Katie couldn’t believe it. Only it’s kind of hard to argue with immediate physical facts. Katie was locked in an airtight steel box and her time was rapidly running out. Along with her air.
She wanted to cry. Or shout. Or scream. Or pound the walls in frustration. Or failing all that curl up into a tiny ball and go to sleep. To hope when she woke up, the nightmare would have ended.
Being short on time and breathable air both she couldn’t afford to do any of that.
Katie had to think. Might not do any good. Wouldn’t hurt to take a few minutes for it.
She sat on the floor and took a deep breath. She calmed herself. Did a mental reset.
As far as she could tell there were three ways this could end well for her. Getting the emergency buttons to work was one. Somehow getting the locked door open was a second. Third and last, someone could come by and let her out.
Katie had already wasted a half hour on the first and most obvious approach. That’d been an error. Sure it’d been worth checking out. Crooks are human. They make mistakes, but this had obviously well planned in advance. Likely by Guy, who would have been careful to brief Marvin properly so that Billy wouldn’t mess it up. The taser, the blankets, their care not to visibly bruise her, and the machinery in front of the switches to make it look like an accident they weren’t working. It’d been carefully planned. It was exceedingly likely they had made sure those emergency switches were useless.
Katie should have realized that sooner.
What about someone rescuing her in time? Was there anything she could do to help with that? If’ there’d been any signal inside what was in effect a large Faraday cage, maybe she could have used the phone on her handheld computer. If the entire warehouse district hadn’t been such a signal desert already. It just wasn’t a place people frequented. It was for storage.
She should consider leaving a message on her handheld. Would in the end maybe, but she had little doubt it’d be the Bouchers or someone working for them that would “find” her body and that they’d handle that. So not a top priority.
Katie’s deadman switched info dumps would serve the purpose as well if they worked. No point wasting time on that. Wasn’t going to do her any good.
Maybe constantly yelling would alert any passer-by. Only there wasn’t likely going to be any passer-byes and it’d use up her limited air that much faster.
Scratch that idea.
Alternatively she could try to be calm and do as little as possible to stretch out her remaining time, hoping that’d give people more time to realize she was missing and come find her.
Only no one knew she was missing or where she’d gone. She’d done too good a job of giving all her friends the slip, and her family was not only far away but unaware of the trouble she was in.
Not much hope there.
So what did that leave? The second option of somehow getting through a locked solid steel airtight door. That was her best option. Ouch.
Katie had the toolkit she always carried. Was there some way of getting at the lock’s mechanism? Of doing the modern equivalent of lock picking?
Bet Sam would know.
Katie got up and went over and looked at the door. She tried to move the door handle. It didn’t budge. She looked at the place where she knew the locking mechanism lay.
It hadn’t been that long ago, had it? That she’d been in Sam’s shop watching him work on one of them. Sam had told her quite a bit about them.
Katie remembered him showing her the heavy metal plate protecting the locking mechanism. She wasn’t going to be hacking her way through something like that.
She also remembered him saying that wasn’t a lock’s greatest vulnerability. That the power to the fail safe mechanism was.
That was it.
That was the lock’s point of greatest vulnerability.
Katie looked around. There it was. A simple “armored” electrical cable coming through a tightly packed port and then running into the door frame. The cabling armor was simple thin metal, not even continuous. Some flexibility was needed.
It practically wrecked a perfectly good screwdriver and took some hard work, but eventually she managed to hack through that cable.
This time when she tried the door handle, it did move.
As did the door.
The outside air seemed so much sweeter.
14: Katie Outnumbered
Having managed to escape the airtight little storage room and having taken a few blessedly sweet lungfuls of non-stale air, Katie realized she had no idea where she was.
In a corridor of the warehouse district, to be sure. Only where, exactly? Katie had been wrapped in a packing blanket and unable to see anything when they’d put her in that little room. Katie didn’t think they’d carried her far. She must be close by where she’d been ambushed by Billy and his thugs. Close to the space where the contraband was stored.
Her goal at this point was to escape the warehouses and make it to the Chief or Commander with the news of what she’d found. First, she needed to figure out exactly where she was. Use that to plot a path out of the place. One that avoided encountering Billy and his crew ideally. One run in a day with that lot was more than enough.
Katie looked around and listened. There. There was one of her little cameras. Not easy to see the sneaky little things. She could hear faint voices off in the mid-distance. Billy and buddies, she’d guess.
The camera would give her access to its entire network and let her figure out where they were. Show her a good route around them too, she hoped.
Katie bounced over and jumped up to grab the camera from the ceiling wall corner she’d placed it into. She landed slow and light. She didn’t weigh more than a few kilograms here in the warehouse district, which only had Ceres' minimal natural gravity.
Katie attached the camera to its controller and began to scroll through the images the network had collected in the last couple of hours. With glee, she noticed she had full records of Billy and his boys not only accessing the storage room with the alien contraband, but of actually handling it. This would prove they were smugglers beyond any doubt. As a bonus, the camera had also captured them ambushing her and locking her in the little room. Add attempted murder to the charges.
That was great, but where was Billy right now? It was taking a lit
tle effort to place the images. One piece of warehouse corridor tended to look much like the next. One image showed Billy and the others working in the contraband storage room. Moving the evidence? Katie didn’t know. Also wasn’t clear where that was from here. She tried to remember the exact layout of the cameras she’d dropped and which numbers corresponded to what locations.
Distracted by that problem, it was a surprise when a shout came. “She’s out, boys!”
One, just one, of Billy’s young accomplices had appeared at the end of the corridor. He was visibly hesitating. Torn between running back to warn Billy and the rest and trying to take Katie on by himself.
The first was what was wise. A young buck’s pride argued for the second. Fleeing from a one-on-one fight with a young girl smaller than you doesn’t look very brave. Looks kind of cowardly, in fact.
Katie didn’t hesitate.
Sometimes it’s a problem that it’s so easy to build up a lot of momentum in low gravity. This wasn’t one of those times. Katie made full use of the distance between her and Billy’s accomplice. Harry, if she remembered correctly. Note to self in the future don’t fail to learn your enemy out of disdain. In the event, Harry stood his ground. A mistake. Crouched low, more pushing forward than stepping or hopping, Katie built up velocity and momentum with each thrust of her legs.
Katie hit Harry right about his knees in an overpowered tackle. Higher up would have been better. She took more of his weight than she would have liked. Harry himself was flipped sidewards and down, doing an involuntary sliding face plant.
Katie granted her would be murderer no mercy. She twisted and awkwardly grabbing his head in one palm, smashed it several times into the floor they were sliding along.
There was blood. Harry’s shouting ceased. She didn’t pause to assess the situation more thoroughly.
There was more shouting coming from the other thugs. Who were blocking the only route she was sure of out of this place.
Katie couldn’t give them the time to get their acts together.
Another of the thugs appeared from the direction of the shouting. Tom, she thought. She hadn’t seen Marvin come to think of it on the camera. Billy’s boys weren’t reacting in a co-ordinated way, thank heavens. Could be Billy really did need Marvin to do his thinking. In any case, she still didn’t have time to waste. She wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Grappling the comatose Harry and pushing him in front of her, she started to regain the momentum she’d lost when she hit him. Tom reacted even more perfectly than Harry. Perfectly for Katie’s purposes.
Tom kept moving towards Katie. He hesitated only to the extent of slowing down a little in the last moments before she hit him. Apparently Ceres born as they were Billy’s boys weren’t that used to very low gravity. If they’d done any serious fighting at all it hadn’t been in low Gees.
Katie smacked her opponent right where she wanted to this time. Tom and Harry took all the damage. Tom was flipped backwards. Flipped hard. She had a real talent for smashing heads against floors. They slide slowly along the floor with Katie on the top of a human sandwich with Harry in the middle and Tom on the bottom. Neither of the thugs was making a peep.
Grabbing Harry, Katie continued forward. Careful not to build up too much momentum again. She had a corner to turn. Katie figured she’d reach it before Billy and the rest of his thugs.
Probably Billy wasn’t moving at all. He’d let his buddies go forward without backup. Probably waiting to use that taser again. From a safe distance. Well, she had the counter to that in her hands.
Going to be tricky mind you to keep Harry between her and Billy, but if she managed it Harry would take the shocks intended for her. Sure sucked to be Harry.
Katie tried to slow as the corner approached. Not with complete success.
A problem as it meant she was being dragged by Harry’s body when they cleared the corner and fully exposed to being tasered by Billy. He’d hung back near the entrance to the contraband warehouse space like she suspected. That much was good. Close in and outnumbered, his size would have been an issue.
Katie desperately tried to twist Harry around between them.
Billy had another of his buddies with him. Rich, most likely it occurred to Katie, as she struggled for life. Rich got proactive and started off towards Katie, only to be pushed hard to one side by Billy. “Get out of my way,” Billy was yelling.
Rich twisting towards Billy was caught off guard by his leader pushing him into the corridor wall. He hit it at a bad angle. For him. Suited Katie fine. Katie was feeling very appreciative of Billy’s buddies habit of hitting hard surfaces with their heads. It all seemed surreally slow.
Must be the effect of the adrenaline the fight was driving through her system.
Billy fired his taser at her just as she managed to bring Harry into place between. He hit Harry, not Katie. Harry twitched with the shocks and Katie could feel them too. Hurt, but she powered through it, using Harry as a battering ram for a third time.
She was getting good at this. Her hit on Billy smashed him backwards hard.
Katie didn’t have time to observe her handiwork. Rich was getting back up. Using the pile up of Billy and Harry as a pivot, she drove Rich right back into the wall with a foot to his face. He slid down it like a character from a children’s cartoon.
Katie was just about done in with exertion, but the fight wasn’t over. Billy didn’t seem to be moving, but she made sure of him by kicking him as hard as she could in the nuts, which got only a subdued grunt. She pulled Harry off of Billy and kicked Billy in the head for good measure. She couldn’t risk his getting back up.
Billy’s taser fell from his limp hand. She picked it up and turned to face the remaining pair of Billy’s boys who’d been working inside the warehouse space. They were standing there with their mouths gapping open. Apparently not quick thinkers. Good thing.
“All right hands in the air and kneel down,” she shouted, waving the taser at them. They seemed slow. “Now!” she yelled, pointing the taser at one of them. That galvanized them into hastily doing as she’d directed.
Katie noticed some heavy duty packing tape to one side. She tried to remember the names of these two. Only one name came to her. “Gerry, you get the packing tape and tape your buddy up,” she said. She wanted nothing more than to taze the two of them and then to kick both their heads in while they lay twitching on the ground. The murdering bastards deserved it.
Katie managed to fight the urge, but her anger must have shown on her face because a white faced Gerry hastened to do her biding.
Once he’d finished taping up his partner, she tazed him anyways. Didn’t kick him while he was down, though. Only taped him up without bothering to be delicate.
Katie looked around in shock.
All her enemies were down. Not moving. She wasn’t entirely sure they were all still alive.
All she wanted to was to lie down herself and get some badly needed rest. She was wiped. Hollow.
She couldn’t. She needed to go for help.
So she did.
* * *
Katie was feeling numb and grimly satisfied. And tired. Very tired.
Katie would have liked to gone somewhere not so busy and to have gotten some sleep. She couldn’t. After she’d met both Chief Dingle and the Commander along with their dozens of subordinate officers and led them back to the warehouse full of alien contraband, the Chief had been clear.
“You stand right here,” he’d said, “and don’t say anything to anyone.” The Commander standing beside them had nodded affirmation.
The police and Space Force personnel didn’t seem to fully trust each other. They were working in pairs. There were now dozens of witnesses to the fact that someone had been smuggling alien contraband.
That someone quite clearly including Billy and his buddies who had been collected up by medical teams and carted off. One medical technician had also peeled off and looked Katie over. Another one of them h
ad reported on the status of the young men to the Chief before leaving.
The Chief had come over to Katie to pass on the information. “Listen, don’t say anything,” he’d said. The Commander like some sort of uniformed bobble-head doll nodded affirmation. He did some review of the full dump of camera footage Katie had given both him and the Commander copies of. “You’re lucky,” he’d said. “You’re not a murderer.” He paused and looked straight at her. “I’m sure a claim of self defense would have held up, but you won’t have to be making it. They’re all still alive and stable now.”
Katie nodded. He’d said not to say anything.
“You have a pass to be here?” he’d asked next.
She handed it to him.
He inspected the fake ID. “This looks like an error in records. I’ll see it’s rectified without any further fuss.”
The Commander nodded approvingly off to one side.
“Stay here and wait. We’ll try not to be too much longer,” the Chief had said before going off to supervise his uniformed minions. The Commander trailed behind quietly. He spared Katie a quick wink as he did so.
Looked like a hint she’d not be in too much trouble. Ought to be a relief, but she was too numb to feel it. Satisfaction, she could manage that much.
Finally all the containers in the storeroom were opened and their contents cataloged. The Commander and the Chief held an animated conversation off to one side that Katie couldn’t quite make out. For all their animation, the men kept their conversation low.
Having reached some sort of conclusion, they came over to Katie.
The Chief looked at her with sympathy. “You don’t look good,” he said.
“Thanks.”
The man’s mouth twitched a quick smile. “You also need work on your deference to authority,” the Chief said. His tone warm if matter of fact. He seemed amused, if anything. “As am sure the Commander can attest, it’s something expected of junior officers in the Space Force.”
The Commander nodded. “The Chief is correct,” he said. “After this, you’re going to get your chance at going to the Academy. Going to mean a lot of work.” He smiled. “You’ve convinced me you’re up to it, but it’s not going to be easy.”
Katie Kincaid Candidate: Katie Kincaid One Page 20